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Commentaries and annotations on the Holy Scriptures
Commentaries and annotations on the Holy Scriptures Author:John Hewlett Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of the inspiration of their sacred writings, a principal topic of argument. Accordingly, no one of the evangelists has been more careful than Matthew, that nothi... more »ng of this kind should be overlooked; and no one of the sacred writers has more properly avoided the unnecessary introduction of any term offensive to his countrymen. TITLE. The Gospel.]?The Greek word EuayysAiov means 'glad' tidings, good, or joyful news.' Our English word 'gospel,' which is compounded of the Saxon textit{god, ' good,' and textit{spell, a history, narrative, or message, very accurately expresses the sense of the original Greek. See textit{Junii Etym. Ang. or textit{Purlc- hurst. OF THE LANGUAGE 1N WH1CH ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL WAS PROBABLY WR1TTEN. Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, who is said to have been the companion of Polycarp, and one of St. John's disciples, asserted, according to Eusebius, textit{(Eccles. Hist. 1. iv. c. xxxix.) that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew. An opinion emanating from such high antiquity, though from a weak and credulous man, (see textit{Jortin's Rem, on Eccles. Hist. vol. i. p. 292.) was adopted and transmitted to posterity by many succeeding fathers of the Christian church; but the learned Erasmus was among the first who doubted the truth of this opinion, and he has been followed by Lightfoot, Whitby, Jortin, Lardner, Wetstein, Masch, Mackniglit, Dr. Hey, and others, who have produced fresh accessions of learning, additional arguments, and probable conjectures on the subject, all tending to prove that the evangelist St. Matthew, like his venerable associates, wrote in Greek, and that the copy of his Gospel, which we now have, is not a translation, but the genuine original. It is to be observed, in the first place, that if St. Matthew wrote in Hebrew, he mad...« less